Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1952)

109 means that, except for close inspection, the 16mm. blowup would have adequate detail. Encouraged by this line of reasoning, I resolved to put the matter to a test at the earliest opportunity. Thus, when Madame Gill Faure, a beautiful interpretive dancer, asked me recently to take some publicity photographs for her, I naturally turned to my movie camera — even though I own two 35mm. still cameras. Assuming from my arithmetic that I could lick the definition problem, my next problem was to obtain a sufficiently high shutter speed. At 16 frames per second camera speed, each frame is exposed 1/30 of a second. At the slow motion speed of 64 frames per second, the exposure drops by a factor of 4 to 1/120 of a second, which was, I feared, not quite fast enough. However, by closing the dissolving shutter of the Cine Special, as shown in Fig. 1, to the ^ open position, the exposure is dropped again by a factor of 4 to 1/480 of a second. This. I believed, could stop all but the most violent action. Although the Cine Special is particularly suited for obtaining these high shutter speeds with a minimum of effort, there seems no reason why any 16mm. camera with a rotary shutter could not be modified, by decreasing the opening angle, to obtain any desired shutter speed. For the actual shooting I picked a location on the brow of a hill so as to obtain a background of sky. A Wratten G filter was placed over the lens to provide a dramatic cloud effect on the monochrome film used. This emulsion was Super X, a fine-grained and medium speed reversal rated at ASA 40 in daylight. With it and the shutter speed of 1/480 of a second, I obtained a good exposure at //4 — even allowing for the 2.5x factor of the filter. Why. you may well ask at this point, did I not use 16mm. color film — if it was maximum definition I was after? For, you will rightly argue, processed color images are entirely grainless and therefore should reproduce better in enlargement. It is a good question. Bat i believe that, for my primary purpose, there are equally good answers to it. You must remember, to begin with, that what I was shooting for, the final image I had my eye on, was a picture reproduced in halftone engraving. And halftone engraving depends for its reproduction on resolving power. This factor in a Kodachrome image is only 55 lines per millimeter, which must be compared to the 90 to 100 lines per millimeter possible under optimum conditions with Super X. It was my reasoning, therefore, that the grain images of the monochrome emulsion would be so fine that they could not get through the 120 screen of the halftone. Secondly, there was the matter of film speed to be considered. Under the bright sunlight which returned me //4 on Super X even with the G filter, normal 16 fps exposure on Kodachrome (we can assume) would be //8. By the time camera speed was increased to 64 fps and the consequent shutter speed to 1/120 of a second, this exposure would drop to //4. And if, by narrowing the shutter angle to one quarter (as I did), shutter timing was cut still further to 1/480 of a second, exposure would then be at the minimum of f/1.9. This kind of wide open aperture doesn't leave much depth of field — even on the relatively short-focus 1 inch lens being used. Specifically, working at say 10 feet, the leeway of acceptable sharpness at f/1.9 was from 8 to 12 feet. With the //4 aperture which I was able to use with Super X, the depth of field extended from 6 to 19 feet. For filming dances, with their unrestrictable movements, this latter seemed the better choice. However, for personality portraits around the home, for that one-in-a-million expression on the baby's face, I suspect that enlarging from [Continued on page 118] The cine camera, urges the author, is faster than the eye . . . Or your trigger finger PERFECTION OF POSE claimed by the author for fast-action pictures made with a movie camera is evidenced in these halftone reproductions from parts of selected 16mm. frames, enlarged (in the larger photo) 128x. Difference of one frame either way spoiled pose.